About RAS

RAS Pioneer Award

About the Award

Description:To recognize individuals who by virtue of initiating new areas of research, development or engineering, have had a significant impact on development of the robotics and/or automation fields. The award is intended for people who are in the mid or late portions of their careersEstablished: 1998Prize:$2,000 (as of 2008), a plaque and a certificate. Up to two awards will be given each year, and no award will be given if no qualified candidate is identifiedFunding:Funded by the IEEE Robotics and Automation SocietyEligibility:Any person active in the fields of robotics and/or automation, whether or not they are members of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, are eligible for the award. Members of the Society who have worked as part of a team will also be eligible, provided their contributions can be clearly identified by the Awards CommitteeBasis for Judging:Factors include: the pioneering nature of the contribution, whether academic or industrial; the impact or the accumulated impact of the candidate's contribution or contributions on the fields of robotics and/or automationPresentation:Annually, at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), which is normally held in the mid-April to mid-May period

Winners of this Award

2016Daniel Koditschek"For his seminal contributions to the mathematical and empirical foundations of robotics, leadership in robotics research, inspired mentorship of the next generation of roboticists"

2015Daniel E. Whitney"For his fundamental pioneering contributions to robotic assembly and its integration into product development"

2014Award Not Presented

2013Raja Chatila"For fundamental pioneering contributions to robotics research in the areas of navigation and control, or visionary leadership, and for life-long commitment to the field"Peter Luh"For pioneering contributions to the development of near-optimal and efficient planning, scheduling, and coordination methodologies for manufacturing and power systems"

2012Jean-Claude Latombe"For pioneering contributions to robot motion planning and the application of robotics methods to computational biology and medicine"

2011Tomas Lozano-Perez"For pioneering work in configuration space motion planning, robotics and automation algorithms, and computational structural biology"Mark Spong"For fundamental contributions to the foundations of control of robots and teleoperators, and for contributions to robotics education"

2010Ruzena Bajcsy"For fundamental pioneering contributions to robotics research in the areas of perception-action systems, telepresence, and active perception, for visionary leadership, and for life-long commitment to the field"Oussama Khatib"For fundamental pioneering contributions to robotics research in the areas of mechanisms, dynamics, and control, for visionary leadership, and for life-long commitment to the field"

2009Matthew Mason"For pioneering contributions to the fundamental understanding of the mechanics of robotic manipulation and to graduate education in robotics"

2008Russell Taylor"For pioneering work in medical robotics and in the theory and practice of programmable sensor-based robot systems"Aristides Requicha"For pioneering contributions to research and education in solid modeling and programmable automation at the macro and nano scales"

2007Steve Jacobsen"In recognition of outstanding contributions to the design and control of leading edge robots and other animate machines"Takeo Kanade"In recognition of outstanding contributions to the fields of computer vision, manipulation, autonomous mobile robots and medical robotics"

2006Suguru Arimoto"For his work on PD and PID control, iterative learning control, and passivity-based control of nonlinear mechanical systems, that represents a source of reference for virtually any scientists dealing with complex systems"

2005Gerhard Hirzinger"For his pioneering research in mechatronic devices, teleoperation, articulated hands, and lightweight robots, and his leadership in space robotics programs in Europe"Hirochika Inoue"For his life long commitment to innovation and excellence in robotics research in Japan and in the world"

2004Antal Bejczy"For seminal technical contributions to robotics and teleoperation, and pioneering research in space robotics and Human-Robot interfaces"Toshio Fukuda"For pioneer contributions to the development of cellular/distributed robotics systems and micro/nano robotic systems"2003Georges Giralt - "For his contributions in Robot Autonomy and Intelligence and for his pioneering robotics research in France"Tzyh-Jong Tarn - "For his technical contributions in developing and implementing nonlinear feedback control concepts for robotics and automation"

2002George Bekey"For leadership in the development of biologically inspired robotic systems, including walking machines, multifingered hands, and multiple robot systems"

2001J Luh"For the development of Newton-Euler equations of motion in a recursive consideration in real-time computer control since the computational complexity is linearly proportional to the number of joints of the robot. The impact of the Newton-Euler formulation of robot dynamics opened up new perspective for robotics research in kinematics, dynamics and control, such as robot motion control, flexible and redundant robot control, path planning, collision avoidance, control of robots having closed-kinematics-chain linkages, multi-robot control systems, etc"Richard "Lou" Paul

2000Bernie Roth"In recognition of his work in robot kinematics"

1999Shigeo Hirose"For contributions in the theory and practice of mobile robotics"